We like to start our wine adventures with a good breakfast. As the Hilton has a good buffet we started there. This allows for us to also craft a plan of attack. This year we decided to do things a bit differently and go to the wineries on the bench instead of near the hotel.

The bench is an area a few miles away that sits a bit up from the lake. It has a climate that is apparently very suitable for growing grapes and making wine.

Our first stop was Angels gate, a nice winery that sits on a hilltop and has a great selection to try. I sampled the Mountainview Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Merlot, Cabernet merlot. I didn’t buy anything because I knew our next stop is one of my favorite wineries.

Fielding Estate is a great winery. They have an amazing view that looks out over the winery and a catwalk that lets you look at the wine making operation. I tried the Chardonnay unpacked, Viognier, Gamay. Here I bought a bottle of the Gamay and we bought our travel passes for the Ice wine festival.

With wine and passes in hand we head to Rosewood.

Rosewood is a winery and a meadery. I’ve been recently getting in mead and this place was awesome. We tried the origin Chardonnay , sussreserve Riesling,  long rows red, lock, stock and barrel, origin cab franc, spiced mead, cyser Apple honey mead. I bought the spiced mead. Maura bought some honey.

Maura took a candid group shot.

Our next stop was KEW.

We found KEW only a couple of years earlier but its quickly become a favorite of ours. They have a nice table to handle larger groups for tastings.

I sampled the 2010 Rosalie, 2014 old vine Riesling, 2014 Marsanne, Soldier’s Grant Cabernet. I ended up buying the barrel aged gamey noir. It seemed to be the theme of the night.

From KEW we headed to Mailvoire and wanted to do the Ice Wine pairing.

At the entrance we were treated to a cheese sampling that was really good. We proceeded to the back of the winery where we had roasted duck ice wine pairing. It too was really good. We also did another wine pairing. I had the Bidous Brut NV, 3014 Mottiar Chardonnay, 2013 Stouck Merlot. I also bought another Gamey. Outside they had the food truck for the cheese monger, the Cheesy Guys. It was really good and Maura bought a bunch of cheese.

We then make a stop at Vineland Estates for their ice wine pairing a dark chocolate and venison stew with their merlot. The rest of the group seemed to really enjoy it but Maura and I didn’t. We also tried their 2010 Riesling with golden bilth cheese and rosemary sea salt cracker cinnamon bark jelly that was really good.

Our next to last stop was Creekside. They’re a favorite of ours. We did the ice wine pairing which was a  chicken liver pate with iconoclast red. I enjoyed it. Maura had zero interest so I took hers. Now it was time for dinner.

Our first choices for dinner weren’t able to accommodate a group our size for that night so we headed to Trius which turned out to be a high point of the whole trip.

Here the photos do way more justice than I could to describe how awesome this meal was.

Check out this awesome smoked salmon.

That was the end of this day. It was a wonderful start but more to come tomorrow.